


stars finding homes

by concreteskies



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-25 00:04:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9793646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concreteskies/pseuds/concreteskies
Summary: A post-ep for 2x12. In which Kara and Lena don't want to be alone after the events of "Luthors".





	

 

This picks up immediately where their scene leaves off in 2x12.

_“look: this, light spilling like honey_  
_from our lips. this, stars finding homes_  
_in the leftover curves of our necks,_  
_bleeding something holy into our skin.”_

_To be whole again // A.C._

 

“Hey Lena,” Kara turns around again, the door knob already in her hands, ready to leave but not quite willing to do so.

“Yeah?” Lena is still looking at her, her eyes are wide and blue in the bright lights of the office and she looks just as desperate as Kara feels to not be left alone in this.

“Do you wanna come?” She plays nervously with the door knob. “Like to my apartment, I uh… maybe-“So she seriously has to put some work into syntax from now on. Put that on her to do list.

“I still have pizza in my freezer and I just-“She breaks off again. “I just thought it would be nice not to be alone tonight.”

Because she almost lost her today. She almost lost her… friend? They both almost died today and it’s too late in the night to pretend that everything is okay.

 “Yes,” Lena replies simply and it sounds like she is exhaling for the first time this night.

xx

Lena looks small. She’s sat on her sofa, wrapped in several layers of blanket and watching Friends reruns on TV and she looks smaller than Kara ever thought possible. It’s funny because _small_ wouldn’t usually be an adjective used to describe Lena Luthor at all. She’s all power and elegance, red lipstick and high heels and she’s so much bigger than the English language ever anticipated.

But she looks small right now, sitting here, stripped from everything.

They aired an hour-long special on her innocence earlier and Kara had watched as she made herself seem impassive to it all. She’s a good actress, she’ll give her that, but she couldn’t hide the way her heartbeat had picked up, the way her breath had stuttered, or the small, almost inaudible whimper caught on her lips.

She hadn’t complained when Kara had switched the channel. Had just drawn her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around them and watched the show with her.

They haven’t talked since they came back to her apartment. Not really anyway.

But Kara glances over at her every so often and finds that every time Lena is still in the same position. Kara remembers folding paper cranes with Eliza when she was younger, the way Eliza had explained that it was good luck in some cultures. She thinks about folding paper cranes into happiness now, as she looks at Lena, at the way she seems to try and fold herself into security.

She doesn’t really think about it when she picks up one of the pillows and throws it at Lena’s head. She looks over startled, lips slightly agape and Kara could focus on the exact way her lips look for about an hour now but that’s not really what she was aiming for here.

Instead she picks up another pillow and throws it at Lena, who quickly brings up her hands to catch it.

“What-“

“Pillow fight,” Kara says simply and with that throws another one at Lena before quickly ducking behind the sofa as Lena propels one back at her. The pillow misses her by only a hand’s width and she quickly moves to pick it up and flings herself onto the sofa, successfully smashing the pillow against Lena’s face.

Lena lets out a surprised sound but doesn’t hesitate to reiterate and pushes Kara back down on the sofa while picking up a pillow and hitting her with it repeatedly. Kara struggles to break free but doesn’t put any real effort in it. She just puts up her hands after a while and pants, “I surrender. I surrender.”

Lena halts her movements at that and it’ only then that Kara realizes the position they’re in: She is laying sprawled across the sofa and Lena is sat on her lap, heaving slightly, hair ruffled and lips finally curved upwards.

“Do you accept me as the queen of pillow fights?”

“I do, I do, I promise,” Kara laughs and Lena moves off her then, causing Kara to regret having surrendered so quickly.

Lena runs her hands through her hair, trying and failing to sort out the mess but she is sat next to Kara now, with her legs crossed underneath her. She seems more open now, like all of the tension and the pain of the past few days have finally leaked out of her.

She’s still not office Lena though; there is nothing intimidating about her here. She’s the Lena Kara has seen glimpses of in their past months of friendship. The Lena that is all bright smiles and soft edges. The Lena that wears sweatpants with little penguins on and has a laugh like soft rain. This is her favorite Lena, she thinks.

Lena sinks back into the couch with a soft sigh and smiles a quiet kind of smile. Yes, this is definitely her favorite Lena.

“So what was this about?” Lena asks, hands giving up the futile fight with her hair and coming together in her lap.

“When the Danvers’ first adopted me I felt kind of strange, like I didn’t belong and I missed my family, especially at night. But whenever I started to close myself off Alex would throw pillows at me and start epic pillow fights. They always made me feel at home, like I still had family.”

Lena nods in that quiet way she does and looks over at her, like she understands. Not just her childhood but also what this means, what it means to share this tradition between them now.

“Thank you,” she says quietly and Kara can’t help herself but reaches out for her, takes her hand into hers and squeezes it gently and hopes that this simple touch will transfer all she is trying to say. Things like “You are not alone in this” things like “I am here. I am here. I am here.”

And Lena squeezes back, like she gets it.

xx

 

It only takes the entirety of the fourth season of Friends for them to fall asleep.

Sometime mid-way through Kara places her head in Lena’s lap and sighs when her hands fall into her hair and start massaging her head slowly. Her movements are soft and sure and it doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep like this. With Lena’s scent enveloping her and her hands in her hair and the sound of her heartbeat faintly in the background, telling her that she is still alive, she hasn’t left her. Everything is okay.

Lena tries to wriggle free a little bit later to move either herself or Kara to the bedroom but Kara scrunches her nose as soon as she moves and grumbles something intelligible and it looks so adorable that she just doesn’t have the heart to do anything but shuffle a little bit lower, not startling Kara from her sleep but managing to place her head on the sofa’s armrest, and drift off into sleep as well.

It must be around 3am when Kara is pulled back into awareness by a low whimper and the rapid acceleration of a heartbeat.

She blinks her eyes multiple times to adjust to the light that’s still burning in her living room and feels the way Lena is trembling underneath her. A small whimper falls from the brunette’s lips, something so broken, like glass shattering on her living room floor and it pierces away at something deep inside Kara.

“Hey, hey, Lena,” she speaks softly, as not to startle her with noise.

There is a sole tear running down Lena’s cheek, and it seems to carve a river of pain into her soft skin.

“You’re okay. It’s just a dream, you’re okay.” Kara reaches out for her, runs her palms along her arms and feels the way she shivering underneath, the way she is shaking somewhere deep down in her bones like she has an earthquake trapped underneath her skin.

“You’re okay.” She brings her hands up to Lena’s cheek and traces gentle circles with her thumb until she feels the trembling subside and Lena’s eyes flutter open. Her eyes are almost impossibly blue like this, blue and full of more than even the sea could hold.

“I’m okay,” Lena says immediately. And Kara nods but doesn’t let go of her, just helps her sit up and then immediately pulls her into her.

Lena goes rigid for a moment, an entire body made from stone but eventually melts into the embrace. Kara tucks her in a little more tightly, brings her arms around her midsection and feels the residue of the tremors still resonating through her, feels the way she sometimes gasps for breath a little, like something inside her chest is knotted up too much for her to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” she hears Lena whisper and pulls back just enough to look up at her.

Her eyes are red around the edges and there are small blotches that spilled tears have painted onto her face and Kara just shakes her head and places her  head on Lena’s shoulder.

“Please don’t be.”

They stay like this for a while: Breathing and holding on to each other, while the city is cast in darkness.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” The answer is immediate and firm and Kara doesn’t push it.

“Do you want to sleep?”

There is a moment of hesitation now before Lena answers with another, “No.”

“Come on then,” Kara stands up slowly, and holds her hands out, palms up, open for Lena to take.

“Where are we going?”

“I wanna show you something.”

xx

They end up on Kara’s rooftop. Kara took two blankets for them and together they sit on a bench near the railing.

“What are we doing here?”

“You can see the stars from here,” Kara replies, pointing up.

Lena leans back as well and Kara watches as her eyes fill with wonder. The sky is surprisingly clear and untainted up here and the black canvas of the night sky is dappled with a million lights.

“I used to search for home in them for so long,” Kara says quietly, like her words would just float away if she spoke them any louder, like they belonged just to Lena in this moment.

Lena turns to her then, searches her face for truth and Kara reaches out for her hand again, weaves their fingers together and holds on tightly. Or maybe Lena is the one doing the holding on. Maybe they are both holding on to each other and maybe that’s the way it should be. Because the night is great, big place to occupy without someone to hold on to.

“You’re-“

“Kryptonian.”

“So you’re-“

“Supergirl.”

Lena just nods and squeezes Kara’s hand.

“You’re not surprised?”

Lena laughs a little at that, a raspy sound that seems to take on a presence of its own against the silence of the night and it sets every fiber in Kara’s body alight.

“Well you are not exactly subtle. I had my suspicions before. But when you flew me out of… there, today-“Lena hesitates for a second before finishing her sentence. “You felt the same.”

“Oh,” Kara nods and they both just look at the stars for a moment, taking in their immensity, their impossible brightness.

 “Thank you for telling me though.”

“You’re my friend.” Kara places her head on Lena’s shoulder then and wraps the blankets a little more tightly around them.

“Tell me about Krypton?”

And so Kara does. She tells her about the summer festivals, where they would dance for hours on end. She sings some of their famous songs. Tells her about the food, the sweet liquorice they used to have there. She tells her about her parents. She tells her about the way they sent her here. She tells her about the way the stars looked back home.

“Cassiopeia is the only constellation I was still able to find in this sky.”

“What does it look like?”

“You see that little w-formation in the sky over there?” Kara points at a part of the sky and Lena narrows her eyes to find it and eventually nods slowly.

“She used to be a queen.”

“What happened to her?”

“She enraged the gods. She proclaimed that her daughter Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids and as punishment for her hybris she was banned into the night sky, hanging upside down on her thrown, cursed to hold onto it as not to fall into the abyss for all eternity.”

“We all pay for our sins,” Lena whispers and Kara can feel the way her throat moves around the words from where her head is still resting on Lena’s shoulder.

“Only our own though,” she sits up then and searches for Lena’s eyes in the darkness.

“You don’t have to carry all this. Just yourself.”

They sit there in silence for a while longer. Kara looking at Lena. Lena looking at the stars.

“He’s my father,” Lena says and finally turns to face Kara as well. There are tears shining in her eyes like little constellations of their own.

“Lionel was my father and Lex is my half-brother and I-“Her voice breaks off there a little. “I am a Luthor.”

“Lena-“

“No,” she takes a shaky intake of breath. “It used to be hard before. But at least I had-“

She looks back up at the stars and laughs a little, in this sad way that hurts somewhere deep inside the chest.

“I used to pretend that my father was an astronaut. Or a scientist on a mission. Or David Attenborough. I used to think to myself that I am just a Luthor by name. But I’m not. I am just like them.”

“Lena,” Kara says and squeezes her hand, pouring everything she’s got into this simple touch. “You are not your family.”

“I-“

“No listen to me. You are not your family. You are Lena. You are so much of everything good on this earth. You are kind and smart and frustratingly beautiful. There isn’t an inch of you that could ever turn out to be like Lex. Lena, whenever you smile it’s like the entire world revolves around it because it is so bright and pure. There is no way you could turn out like them. Not with you constantly choosing to do what is good and right instead of working with your family. You are just Lena. You are not Luthor.”

“Kara-“

“And you are not alone in this; please you need to understand this.” Kara looks at her in earnest now, eyes pleading and wide with all of this. “I am always going to be here to hold onto you if you feel yourself slipping; I am not letting you leave me.”

Lena looks at their intertwined hands in their middle and nods.

“You won’t let me turn bad?”

“You won’t let yourself turn bad. But I will be here too, to help you if it gets too heavy.”

There is a small cascade of tears running down Lena’s cheeks now, glistening softly in the barely there light, and she leans into Kara ever so slightly, shoulders brushing against each other.

“Thank you, Kara. For being there.”

“I always will be.”

They sit like this for a while then, gently leaning against each other before Kara bumps her elbow into Lena’s side and says. “Plus look at all the hair you’ve got. There is no way you could ever turn out like Lex.”

This elicits a soft chuckle from Lena and Kara smiles to herself when Lena places her head on her shoulder this time.

They both look out for the stars again, pointing at random clusters of them and making up constellations of their own for a while.

“I think you are my Cassiopeia, Kara,” Lena says then, a timid whisper in the silence of stars.

“What?”

“Obviously not the challenging the gods and hybris part,” she laughs softly. “But you know, the part where it means feeling at home.”

Kara smiles at this explanation and searches for the familiar constellation in the sky. The way it impends from the sky, placed against blackness. A home.

“I think you are my Cassiopeia too, Lena.”

Kara turns her head a little so her lips fall against the smooth skin of Lena’s forehead and she presses the softest of kisses onto it. Lena sighs a little and looks up at Kara, lips curved upwards into a small smile.

“So remember when you said we were friends?” Lena asks on a smile.

“Yes.”

“What if we were friends, who go on dates together?”

Kara gives a low chuckle at that and nods against Lena’s head.

“I’d like that. We could be friends, who kiss as well.”

“Yes. Friends, who find each other frustratingly beautiful.”

Kara feels the laugh low in her stomach, warm and happy, happy, happy. “I am going to regret having said that, won’t I?”

Lena laughs as well and Kara can feel the way her laugh falls from her mouth, the way she resonates with it and it feels so much like happiness she cannot quite put it into words.

“Can you tell me some more?”

“Yeah I guess can be your friend, who compliments your lips and your eyes and your-“

Lena doesn’t let her finish but leans up and presses her lips on top of Kara’s. They’re still smiling into the kiss and it’s soft and slow and tastes like home.

**Author's Note:**

> When you are supposed to do masses of course work for uni but instead you just eat a tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream and write fic all day. Anyway I hope you liked it, I just needed some gay happiness to brighten my day.  
> I’m also on tumblr (dancingontiptoes) and twitter (concreteskies).


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